[6]
Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist ticket in the fall
election of 1906 Christian Era. An Englishman by birth, a writer of many books
on political economy and philosophy, and one of the Socialist leaders of the
times.

[7]
There is no more horrible page in history than the treatment of the child and
women slaves in the English factories in the latter half of the eighteenth
century of the Christian Era. In such industrial hells arose some of the
proudest fortunes of that day.

Bishop Morehouse hesitated. Like Dr. Hammerfield, he was unused to this fierce
“infighting,” as Ernest called it.

“The history of the eighteenth century is written,” Ernest
prompted. “If the Church was not dumb, it will be found not dumb in the
books.”

“I am afraid the Church was dumb,” the Bishop confessed.

“And the Church is dumb to-day.”

“There I disagree,” said the Bishop.

Ernest paused, looked at him searchingly, and accepted the challenge.

“All right,” he said. “Let us see. In Chicago there are women
who toil all the week for ninety cents. Has the Church protested?”

“This is news to me,” was the answer. “Ninety cents per week!
It is horrible!”

“Has the Church protested?” Ernest insisted.

“The Church does not know.” The Bishop was struggling hard.

“Yet the command to the Church was, ‘Feed my lambs,’”
Ernest sneered. And then, the next moment, “Pardon my sneer, Bishop. But
can you wonder that we lose patience with you? When have you protested to your
capitalistic congregations at the working of children in the Southern cotton
mills?[8] Children, six and seven years of age, working every night at
twelve-hour shifts? They never see the blessed sunshine. They die like flies.
The dividends are paid out of their blood. And out of the dividends magnificent
churches are builded in New England, wherein your kind preaches pleasant
platitudes to the sleek, full-bellied recipients of those dividends.”

[8]
Everhard might have drawn a better illustration from the Southern
Church’s outspoken defence of chattel slavery prior to what is known as
the “War of the Rebellion.” Several such illustrations, culled from
the documents of the times, are here appended. In 1835 A.D., the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church resolved that: “slavery is
recognized in both the Old and the New Testaments, and is not condemned by the
authority of God.” The Charleston Baptist Association issued the
following, in an address, in 1835 A.D.: “The right of masters to
dispose of the time of their slaves has been distinctly recognized by the
Creator of all things, who is surely at liberty to vest the right of property
over any object whomsoever He pleases.” The Rev. E. D. Simon, Doctor
of Divinity and professor in the Randolph-Macon Methodist College of Virginia,
wrote: “Extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of
property in slaves, together with the usual incidents to that right. The right
to buy and sell is clearly stated. Upon the whole, then, whether we consult the
Jewish policy instituted by God himself, or the uniform opinion and practice of
mankind in all ages, or the injunctions of the New Testament and the moral law,
we are brought to the conclusion that slavery is not immoral. Having
established the point that the first African slaves were legally brought into
bondage, the right to detain their children in bondage follows as an
indispensable consequence. Thus we see that the slavery that exists in America
was founded in right.”
It is not at all remarkable that this same note should have been struck by
the Church a generation or so later in relation to the defence of capitalistic
property. In the great museum at Asgard there is a book entitled “Essays
in Application,” written by Henry van Dyke. The book was published in
1905 of the Christian Era. From what we can make out, Van Dyke must have been a
churchman. The book is a good example of what Everhard would have called
bourgeois thinking. Note the similarity between the utterance of the Charleston
Baptist Association quoted above, and the following utterance of Van Dyke
seventy years later: “The Bible teaches that God owns the world. He
distributes to every man according to His own good pleasure, conformably to
general laws.”

“I did not know,” the Bishop murmured faintly. His face was pale,
and he seemed suffering from nausea.

“Then you have not protested?”

The Bishop shook his head.

“Then the Church is dumb to-day, as it was in the eighteenth
century?”

The Bishop was silent, and for once Ernest forbore to press the point.

“And do not forget, whenever a churchman does protest, that he is
discharged.”

“I hardly think that is fair,” was the objection.

“Will you protest?” Ernest demanded.

“Show me evils, such as you mention, in our own community, and I will
protest.”

“I’ll show you,” Ernest said quietly. “I am at your
disposal. I will take you on a journey through hell.”

“And I shall protest.” The Bishop straightened himself in his
chair, and over his gentle face spread the harshness of the warrior. “The
Church shall not be dumb!”

“You will be discharged,” was the warning.

“I shall prove the contrary,” was the retort. “I shall prove,
if what you say is so, that the Church has erred through ignorance. And,
furthermore, I hold that whatever is horrible in industrial society is due to
the ignorance of the capitalist class. It will mend all that is wrong as soon
as it receives the message. And this message it shall be the duty of the Church
to deliver.”

Ernest laughed. He laughed brutally, and I was driven to the Bishop’s
defence.

“Remember,” I said, “you see but one side of the shield.
There is much good in us, though you give us credit for no good at all. Bishop
Morehouse is right. The industrial wrong, terrible as you say it is, is due to
ignorance. The divisions of society have become too widely separated.”

“The wild Indian is not so brutal and savage as the capitalist
class,” he answered; and in that moment I hated him.

“You do not know us,” I answered. “We are not brutal and
savage.”

“Prove it,” he challenged.

“How can I prove it . . . to you?” I was growing angry.

He shook his head. “I do not ask you to prove it to me. I ask you to
prove it to yourself.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know nothing,” was his rude reply.

“There, there, children,” father said soothingly.

“I don’t care—” I began indignantly, but Ernest
interrupted.

“I understand you have money, or your father has, which is the same
thing—money invested in the Sierra Mills.”

“What has that to do with it?” I cried.

“Nothing much,” he began slowly, “except that the gown you
wear is stained with blood. The food you eat is a bloody stew. The blood of
little children and of strong men is dripping from your very roof-beams. I can
close my eyes, now, and hear it drip, drop, drip, drop, all about me.”

And suiting the action to the words, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his
chair. I burst into tears of mortification and hurt vanity. I had never been so
brutally treated in my life. Both the Bishop and my father were embarrassed and
perturbed. They tried to lead the conversation away into easier channels; but
Ernest opened his eyes, looked at me, and waved them aside. His mouth was
stern, and his eyes too; and in the latter there was no glint of laughter. What
he was about to say, what terrible castigation he was going to give me, I never
knew; for at that moment a man, passing along the sidewalk, stopped and glanced
in at us. He was a large man, poorly dressed, and on his back was a great load
of rattan and bamboo stands, chairs, and screens. He looked at the house as if
debating whether or not he should come in and try to sell some of his wares.

“That man’s name is Jackson,” Ernest said.

“With that strong body of his he should be at work, and not
peddling,”[9] I answered curtly.

[9]
In that day there were many thousands of these poor merchants called
pedlers. They carried their whole stock in trade from door to door. It
was a most wasteful expenditure of energy. Distribution was as confused and
irrational as the whole general system of society.

“Notice the sleeve of his left arm,” Ernest said gently.

I looked, and saw that the sleeve was empty.

“It was some of the blood from that arm that I heard dripping from your
roof-beams,” Ernest said with continued gentleness. “He lost his
arm in the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out on the
highway to die. When I say ‘you,’ I mean the superintendent and the
officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills for you.
It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the company a few
dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the
small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed out a
double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint, and his arm was picked and
clawed to shreds from the finger tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The
mills were working overtime. They paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had
been working many hours, and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap.
They made his movements a bit slow. That was why the machine caught him. He had
a wife and three children.”

“And what did the company do for him?” I asked.

“Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They successfully fought the
damage suit he brought when he came out of hospital. The company employs very
efficient lawyers, you know.”

“You have not told the whole story,” I said with conviction.
“Or else you do not know the whole story. Maybe the man was
insolent.”

“Insolent! Ha! ha!” His laughter was Mephistophelian. “Great
God! Insolent! And with his arm chewed off! Nevertheless he was a meek and
lowly servant, and there is no record of his having been insolent.”

“But the courts,” I urged. “The case would not have been
decided against him had there been no more to the affair than you have
mentioned.”

“Colonel Ingram is leading counsel for the company. He is a shrewd
lawyer.” Ernest looked at me intently for a moment, then went on.
“I’ll tell you what you do, Miss Cunningham. You investigate
Jackson’s case.”

“I had already determined to,” I said coldly.

“All right,” he beamed good-naturedly, “and I’ll tell
you where to find him. But I tremble for you when I think of all you are to
prove by Jackson’s arm.”

And so it came about that both the Bishop and I accepted Ernest’s
challenges. They went away together, leaving me smarting with a sense of
injustice that had been done me and my class. The man was a beast. I hated him,
then, and consoled myself with the thought that his behavior was what was to be
expected from a man of the working class.

CHAPTER III.
JACKSON’S ARM

Little did I dream the fateful part Jackson’s arm was to play in my life.
Jackson himself did not impress me when I hunted him out. I found him in a
crazy, ramshackle[1] house down near the bay on the edge of the marsh. Pools of
stagnant water stood around the house, their surfaces covered with a green and
putrid-looking scum, while the stench that arose from them was intolerable.

[1]
An adjective descriptive of ruined and dilapidated houses in which great
numbers of the working people found shelter in those days. They invariably paid
rent, and, considering the value of such houses, enormous rent, to the
landlords.

I found Jackson the meek and lowly man he had been described. He was making
some sort of rattan-work, and he toiled on stolidly while I talked with him.
But in spite of his meekness and lowliness, I fancied I caught the first note
of a nascent bitterness in him when he said:

“They might a-given me a job as watchman,[2] anyway.”

[2]
In those days thievery was incredibly prevalent. Everybody stole property
from everybody else. The lords of society stole legally or else legalized their
stealing, while the poorer classes stole illegally. Nothing was safe unless
guarded. Enormous numbers of men were employed as watchmen to protect property.
The houses of the well-to-do were a combination of safe deposit vault and
fortress. The appropriation of the personal belongings of others by our own
children of to-day is looked upon as a rudimentary survival of the
theft-characteristic that in those early times was universal.

I got little out of him. He struck me as stupid, and yet the deftness with
which he worked with his one hand seemed to belie his stupidity. This suggested
an idea to me.

“How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine?” I
asked.

He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head. “I
don’t know. It just happened.”

“Carelessness?” I prompted.

“No,” he answered, “I ain’t for callin’ it that.
I was workin’ overtime, an’ I guess I was tired out some. I worked
seventeen years in them mills, an’ I’ve took notice that most of
the accidents happens just before whistle-blow.[3] I’m willin’ to bet
that more accidents happens in the hour before whistle-blow than in all the
rest of the day. A man ain’t so quick after workin’ steady for
hours. I’ve seen too many of ’em cut up an’ gouged an’
chawed not to know.”

[3]
The laborers were called to work and dismissed by savage, screaming,
nerve-racking steam-whistles.

“Many of them?” I queried.

“Hundreds an’ hundreds, an’ children, too.”

With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson’s story of his
accident was the same as that I had already heard. When I asked him if he had
broken some rule of working the machinery, he shook his head.

“I chucked off the belt with my right hand,” he said,
“an’ made a reach for the flint with my left. I didn’t stop
to see if the belt was off. I thought my right hand had done it—only it
didn’t. I reached quick, and the belt wasn’t all the way off. And
then my arm was chewed off.”

“It must have been painful,” I said sympathetically.

“The crunchin’ of the bones wasn’t nice,” was his
answer.

His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one thing was clear
to him, and that was that he had not got any damages. He had a feeling that the
testimony of the foremen and the superintendent had brought about the adverse
decision of the court. Their testimony, as he put it, “wasn’t what
it ought to have ben.” And to them I resolved to go.

One thing was plain, Jackson’s situation was wretched. His wife was in
ill health, and he was unable to earn, by his rattan-work and peddling,
sufficient food for the family. He was back in his rent, and the oldest boy, a
lad of eleven, had started to work in the mills.

“They might a-given me that watchman’s job,” were his last
words as I went away.

By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled Jackson’s case, and the
two foremen and the superintendent at the mills who had testified, I began to
feel that there was something after all in Ernest’s contention.

He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the lawyer, and at sight of him I
did not wonder that Jackson’s case had been lost. My first thought was
that it had served Jackson right for getting such a lawyer. But the next moment
two of Ernest’s statements came flashing into my consciousness:
“The company employs very efficient lawyers” and “Colonel
Ingram is a shrewd lawyer.” I did some rapid thinking. It dawned upon me
that of course the company could afford finer legal talent than could a
workingman like Jackson. But this was merely a minor detail. There was some
very good reason, I was sure, why Jackson’s case had gone against him.

“Why did you lose the case?” I asked.

The lawyer was perplexed and worried for a moment, and I found it in my heart
to pity the wretched little creature. Then he began to whine. I do believe his
whine was congenital. He was a man beaten at birth. He whined about the
testimony. The witnesses had given only the evidence that helped the other
side. Not one word could he get out of them that would have helped Jackson.
They knew which side their bread was buttered on. Jackson was a fool. He had
been brow-beaten and confused by Colonel Ingram. Colonel Ingram was brilliant
at cross-examination. He had made Jackson answer damaging questions.

“How could his answers be damaging if he had the right on his
side?” I demanded.

“What’s right got to do with it?” he demanded back.
“You see all those books.” He moved his hand over the array of
volumes on the walls of his tiny office. “All my reading and studying of
them has taught me that law is one thing and right is another thing. Ask any
lawyer. You go to Sunday-school to learn what is right. But you go to those
books to learn . . . law.”

“Do you mean to tell me that Jackson had the right on his side and yet
was beaten?” I queried tentatively. “Do you mean to tell me that
there is no justice in Judge Caldwell’s court?”

The little lawyer glared at me a moment, and then the belligerence faded out of
his face.

“I hadn’t a fair chance,” he began whining again. “They
made a fool out of Jackson and out of me, too. What chance had I? Colonel
Ingram is a great lawyer. If he wasn’t great, would he have charge of the
law business of the Sierra Mills, of the Erston Land Syndicate, of the Berkeley
Consolidated, of the Oakland, San Leandro, and Pleasanton Electric? He’s
a corporation lawyer, and corporation lawyers are not paid for being fools.[4]
What do you think the Sierra Mills alone give him twenty thousand dollars a
year for? Because he’s worth twenty thousand dollars a year to them,
that’s what for. I’m not worth that much. If I was, I
wouldn’t be on the outside, starving and taking cases like
Jackson’s. What do you think I’d have got if I’d won
Jackson’s case?”

[4]
The function of the corporation lawyer was to serve, by corrupt methods, the
money-grabbing propensities of the corporations. It is on record that Theodore
Roosevelt, at that time President of the United States, said in 1905 A.D., in
his address at Harvard Commencement: “We all know that, as things
actually are, many of the most influential and most highly remunerated members
of the Bar in every centre of wealth, make it their special task to work out
bold and ingenious schemes by which their wealthy clients, individual or
corporate, can evade the laws which were made to regulate, in the interests of
the public, the uses of great wealth.”

“You’d have robbed him, most probably,” I answered.

“Of course I would,” he cried angrily. “I’ve got to
live, haven’t I?”[5]

[5]
A typical illustration of the internecine strife that permeated all society.
Men preyed upon one another like ravening wolves. The big wolves ate the little
wolves, and in the social pack Jackson was one of the least of the little
wolves.

“He has a wife and children,” I chided.

“So have I a wife and children,” he retorted. “And
there’s not a soul in this world except myself that cares whether they
starve or not.”

His face suddenly softened, and he opened his watch and showed me a small
photograph of a woman and two little girls pasted inside the case.

“There they are. Look at them. We’ve had a hard time, a hard time.
I had hoped to send them away to the country if I’d won Jackson’s
case. They’re not healthy here, but I can’t afford to send them
away.”

When I started to leave, he dropped back into his whine.

“I hadn’t the ghost of a chance. Colonel Ingram and Judge Caldwell
are pretty friendly. I’m not saying that if I’d got the right kind
of testimony out of their witnesses on cross-examination, that friendship would
have decided the case. And yet I must say that Judge Caldwell did a whole lot
to prevent my getting that very testimony. Why, Judge Caldwell and Colonel
Ingram belong to the same lodge and the same club. They live in the same
neighborhood—one I can’t afford. And their wives are always in and
out of each other’s houses. They’re always having whist parties and
such things back and forth.”

“And yet you think Jackson had the right of it?” I asked, pausing
for the moment on the threshold.

“I don’t think; I know it,” was his answer. “And at
first I thought he had some show, too. But I didn’t tell my wife. I
didn’t want to disappoint her. She had her heart set on a trip to the
country hard enough as it was.”

“Why did you not call attention to the fact that Jackson was trying to
save the machinery from being injured?” I asked Peter Donnelly, one of
the foremen who had testified at the trial.

He pondered a long time before replying. Then he cast an anxious look about him
and said:

“Because I’ve a good wife an’ three of the sweetest children
ye ever laid eyes on, that’s why.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“In other words, because it wouldn’t a-ben healthy,” he
answered.

“You mean—” I began.

But he interrupted passionately.

“I mean what I said. It’s long years I’ve worked in the
mills. I began as a little lad on the spindles. I worked up ever since.
It’s by hard work I got to my present exalted position. I’m a
foreman, if you please. An’ I doubt me if there’s a man in the
mills that’d put out a hand to drag me from drownin’. I used to
belong to the union. But I’ve stayed by the company through two strikes.
They called me ‘scab.’ There’s not a man among ’em
to-day to take a drink with me if I asked him. D’ye see the scars on me
head where I was struck with flying bricks? There ain’t a child at the
spindles but what would curse me name. Me only friend is the company.
It’s not me duty, but me bread an’ butter an’ the life of me
children to stand by the mills. That’s why.”

“Was Jackson to blame?” I asked.

“He should a-got the damages. He was a good worker an’ never made
trouble.”

“Then you were not at liberty to tell the whole truth, as you had sworn
to do?”

He shook his head.

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” I said
solemnly.

Again his face became impassioned, and he lifted it, not to me, but to heaven.

“I’d let me soul an’ body burn in everlastin’ hell for
them children of mine,” was his answer.

Henry Dallas, the superintendent, was a vulpine-faced creature who regarded me
insolently and refused to talk. Not a word could I get from him concerning the
trial and his testimony. But with the other foreman I had better luck. James
Smith was a hard-faced man, and my heart sank as I encountered him. He, too,
gave me the impression that he was not a free agent, and as we talked I began
to see that he was mentally superior to the average of his kind. He agreed with
Peter Donnelly that Jackson should have got damages, and he went farther and
called the action heartless and cold-blooded that had turned the worker adrift
after he had been made helpless by the accident. Also, he explained that there
were many accidents in the mills, and that the company’s policy was to
fight to the bitter end all consequent damage suits.

“It means hundreds of thousands a year to the stockholders,” he
said; and as he spoke I remembered the last dividend that had been paid my
father, and the pretty gown for me and the books for him that had been bought
out of that dividend. I remembered Ernest’s charge that my gown was
stained with blood, and my flesh began to crawl underneath my garments.

“When you testified at the trial, you didn’t point out that Jackson
received his accident through trying to save the machinery from damage?”
I said.

“No, I did not,” was the answer, and his mouth set bitterly.
“I testified to the effect that Jackson injured himself by neglect and
carelessness, and that the company was not in any way to blame or
liable.”

“Was it carelessness?” I asked.

“Call it that, or anything you want to call it. The fact is, a man gets
tired after he’s been working for hours.”

I was becoming interested in the man. He certainly was of a superior kind.

“You are better educated than most workingmen,” I said.

“I went through high school,” he replied. “I worked my way
through doing janitor-work. I wanted to go through the university. But my
father died, and I came to work in the mills.

“I wanted to become a naturalist,” he explained shyly, as though
confessing a weakness. “I love animals. But I came to work in the mills.
When I was promoted to foreman I got married, then the family came, and . . .
well, I wasn’t my own boss any more.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“I was explaining why I testified at the trial the way I did—why I
followed instructions.”

“Whose instructions?”

“Colonel Ingram. He outlined the evidence I was to give.”

“And it lost Jackson’s case for him.”

He nodded, and the blood began to rise darkly in his face.

“And Jackson had a wife and two children dependent on him.”

“I know,” he said quietly, though his face was growing darker.

“Tell me,” I went on, “was it easy to make yourself over from
what you were, say in high school, to the man you must have become to do such a
thing at the trial?”

The suddenness of his outburst startled and frightened me. He ripped[6] out a
savage oath, and clenched his fist as though about to strike me.

[6]
It is interesting to note the virilities of language that were common speech
in that day, as indicative of the life, ‘red of claw and fang,’
that was then lived. Reference is here made, of course, not to the oath of
Smith, but to the verb ripped used by Avis Everhard.

“I beg your pardon,” he said the next moment. “No, it was not
easy. And now I guess you can go away. You’ve got all you wanted out of
me. But let me tell you this before you go. It won’t do you any good to
repeat anything I’ve said. I’ll deny it, and there are no
witnesses. I’ll deny every word of it; and if I have to, I’ll do it
under oath on the witness stand.”

After my interview with Smith I went to my father’s office in the
Chemistry Building and there encountered Ernest. It was quite unexpected, but
he met me with his bold eyes and firm hand-clasp, and with that curious blend
of his awkwardness and ease. It was as though our last stormy meeting was
forgotten; but I was not in the mood to have it forgotten.

“I have been looking up Jackson’s case,” I said abruptly.

He was all interested attention, and waited for me to go on, though I could see
in his eyes the certitude that my convictions had been shaken.

“He seems to have been badly treated,” I confessed.
“I—I—think some of his blood is dripping from our
roof-beams.”

“Of course,” he answered. “If Jackson and all his fellows
were treated mercifully, the dividends would not be so large.”

“I shall never be able to take pleasure in pretty gowns again,” I
added.

I felt humble and contrite, and was aware of a sweet feeling that Ernest was a
sort of father confessor. Then, as ever after, his strength appealed to me. It
seemed to radiate a promise of peace and protection.

“Nor will you be able to take pleasure in sackcloth,” he said
gravely. “There are the jute mills, you know, and the same thing goes on
there. It goes on everywhere. Our boasted civilization is based upon blood,
soaked in blood, and neither you nor I nor any of us can escape the scarlet
stain. The men you talked with—who were they?”

I told him all that had taken place.

“And not one of them was a free agent,” he said. “They were
all tied to the merciless industrial machine. And the pathos of it and the
tragedy is that they are tied by their heartstrings. Their
children—always the young life that it is their instinct to protect. This
instinct is stronger than any ethic they possess. My father! He lied, he stole,
he did all sorts of dishonorable things to put bread into my mouth and into the
mouths of my brothers and sisters. He was a slave to the industrial machine,
and it stamped his life out, worked him to death.”

“But you,” I interjected. “You are surely a free
agent.”

“Not wholly,” he replied. “I am not tied by my heartstrings.
I am often thankful that I have no children, and I dearly love children. Yet if
I married I should not dare to have any.”

“That surely is bad doctrine,” I cried.

“I know it is,” he said sadly. “But it is expedient doctrine.
I am a revolutionist, and it is a perilous vocation.”

I laughed incredulously.

“If I tried to enter your father’s house at night to steal his
dividends from the Sierra Mills, what would he do?”

“He sleeps with a revolver on the stand by the bed,” I answered.
“He would most probably shoot you.”

“And if I and a few others should lead a million and a half of men[7] into
the houses of all the well-to-do, there would be a great deal of shooting,
wouldn’t there?”

[7]
This reference is to the socialist vote cast in the United States in 1910.
The rise of this vote clearly indicates the swift growth of the party of
revolution. Its voting strength in the United States in 1888 was 2068; in 1902,
127,713; in 1904, 435,040; in 1908, 1,108,427; and in 1910, 1,688,211.

“Yes, but you are not doing that,” I objected.

“It is precisely what I am doing. And we intend to take, not the mere
wealth in the houses, but all the sources of that wealth, all the mines, and
railroads, and factories, and banks, and stores. That is the revolution. It is
truly perilous. There will be more shooting, I am afraid, than even I dream of.
But as I was saying, no one to-day is a free agent. We are all caught up in the
wheels and cogs of the industrial machine. You found that you were, and that
the men you talked with were. Talk with more of them. Go and see Colonel
Ingram. Look up the reporters that kept Jackson’s case out of the papers,
and the editors that run the papers. You will find them all slaves of the
machine.”

A little later in our conversation I asked him a simple little question about
the liability of workingmen to accidents, and received a statistical lecture in
return.

“It is all in the books,” he said. “The figures have been
gathered, and it has been proved conclusively that accidents rarely occur in
the first hours of the morning work, but that they increase rapidly in the
succeeding hours as the workers grow tired and slower in both their muscular
and mental processes.

“Why, do you know that your father has three times as many chances for
safety of life and limb than has a working-man? He has. The insurance[8]
companies know. They will charge him four dollars and twenty cents a year on a
thousand-dollar accident policy, and for the same policy they will charge a
laborer fifteen dollars.”

[8]
In the terrible wolf-struggle of those centuries, no man was permanently
safe, no matter how much wealth he amassed. Out of fear for the welfare of
their families, men devised the scheme of insurance. To us, in this intelligent
age, such a device is laughably absurd and primitive. But in that age insurance
was a very serious matter. The amusing part of it is that the funds of the
insurance companies were frequently plundered and wasted by the very officials
who were intrusted with the management of them.

“And you?” I asked; and in the moment of asking I was aware of a
solicitude that was something more than slight.

“Oh, as a revolutionist, I have about eight chances to the
workingman’s one of being injured or killed,” he answered
carelessly. “The insurance companies charge the highly trained chemists
that handle explosives eight times what they charge the workingmen. I
don’t think they’d insure me at all. Why did you ask?”

My eyes fluttered, and I could feel the blood warm in my face. It was not that
he had caught me in my solicitude, but that I had caught myself, and in his
presence.

Just then my father came in and began making preparations to depart with me.
Ernest returned some books he had borrowed, and went away first. But just as he
was going, he turned and said:

“Oh, by the way, while you are ruining your own peace of mind and I am
ruining the Bishop’s, you’d better look up Mrs. Wickson and Mrs.
Pertonwaithe. Their husbands, you know, are the two principal stockholders in
the Mills. Like all the rest of humanity, those two women are tied to the
machine, but they are so tied that they sit on top of it.”

CHAPTER IV.
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE

The more I thought of Jackson’s arm, the more shaken I was. I was
confronted by the concrete. For the first time I was seeing life. My university
life, and study and culture, had not been real. I had learned nothing but
theories of life and society that looked all very well on the printed page, but
now I had seen life itself. Jackson’s arm was a fact of life. “The
fact, man, the irrefragable fact!” of Ernest’s was ringing in my
consciousness.

It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole society was based upon blood.
And yet there was Jackson. I could not get away from him. Constantly my thought
swung back to him as the compass to the Pole. He had been monstrously treated.
His blood had not been paid for in order that a larger dividend might be paid.
And I knew a score of happy complacent families that had received those
dividends and by that much had profited by Jackson’s blood. If one man
could be so monstrously treated and society move on its way unheeding, might
not many men be so monstrously treated? I remembered Ernest’s women of
Chicago who toiled for ninety cents a week, and the child slaves of the
Southern cotton mills he had described. And I could see their wan white hands,
from which the blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which had
been made my gown. And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and the dividends
that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon my gown as well.
Jackson I could not escape. Always my meditations led me back to him.

Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge of a
precipice. It was as though I were about to see a new and awful revelation of
life. And not I alone. My whole world was turning over. There was my father. I
could see the effect Ernest was beginning to have on him. And then there was
the Bishop. When I had last seen him he had looked a sick man. He was at high
nervous tension, and in his eyes there was unspeakable horror. From the little
I learned I knew that Ernest had been keeping his promise of taking him through
hell. But what scenes of hell the Bishop’s eyes had seen, I knew not, for
he seemed too stunned to speak about them.

Once, the feeling strong upon me that my little world and all the world was
turning over, I thought of Ernest as the cause of it; and also I thought,
“We were so happy and peaceful before he came!” And the next moment
I was aware that the thought was a treason against truth, and Ernest rose
before me transfigured, the apostle of truth, with shining brows and the
fearlessness of one of God’s own angels, battling for the truth and the
right, and battling for the succor of the poor and lonely and oppressed. And
then there arose before me another figure, the Christ! He, too, had taken the
part of the lowly and oppressed, and against all the established power of
priest and pharisee. And I remembered his end upon the cross, and my heart
contracted with a pang as I thought of Ernest. Was he, too, destined for a
cross?—he, with his clarion call and war-noted voice, and all the fine
man’s vigor of him!

And in that moment I knew that I loved him, and that I was melting with desire
to comfort him. I thought of his life. A sordid, harsh, and meagre life it must
have been. And I thought of his father, who had lied and stolen for him and
been worked to death. And he himself had gone into the mills when he was ten!
All my heart seemed bursting with desire to fold my arms around him, and to
rest his head on my breast—his head that must be weary with so many
thoughts; and to give him rest—just rest—and easement and
forgetfulness for a tender space.

I met Colonel Ingram at a church reception. Him I knew well and had known well
for many years. I trapped him behind large palms and rubber plants, though he
did not know he was trapped. He met me with the conventional gayety and
gallantry. He was ever a graceful man, diplomatic, tactful, and considerate.
And as for appearance, he was the most distinguished-looking man in our
society. Beside him even the venerable head of the university looked tawdry and
small.

And yet I found Colonel Ingram situated the same as the unlettered mechanics.
He was not a free agent. He, too, was bound upon the wheel. I shall never
forget the change in him when I mentioned Jackson’s case. His smiling
good nature vanished like a ghost. A sudden, frightful expression distorted his
well-bred face. I felt the same alarm that I had felt when James Smith broke
out. But Colonel Ingram did not curse. That was the slight difference that was
left between the workingman and him. He was famed as a wit, but he had no wit
now. And, unconsciously, this way and that he glanced for avenues of escape.
But he was trapped amid the palms and rubber trees.

Oh, he was sick of the sound of Jackson’s name. Why had I brought the
matter up? He did not relish my joke. It was poor taste on my part, and very
inconsiderate. Did I not know that in his profession personal feelings did not
count? He left his personal feelings at home when he went down to the office.
At the office he had only professional feelings.

“Should Jackson have received damages?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he answered. “That is, personally, I have a
feeling that he should. But that has nothing to do with the legal aspects of
the case.”

He was getting his scattered wits slightly in hand.

“Tell me, has right anything to do with the law?” I asked.

“You have used the wrong initial consonant,” he smiled in answer.

“Might?” I queried; and he nodded his head. “And yet we are
supposed to get justice by means of the law?”

“That is the paradox of it,” he countered. “We do get
justice.”

“You are speaking professionally now, are you not?” I asked.

Colonel Ingram blushed, actually blushed, and again he looked anxiously about
him for a way of escape. But I blocked his path and did not offer to move.

“Tell me,” I said, “when one surrenders his personal feelings
to his professional feelings, may not the action be defined as a sort of
spiritual mayhem?”

I did not get an answer. Colonel Ingram had ingloriously bolted, overturning a
palm in his flight.

Next I tried the newspapers. I wrote a quiet, restrained, dispassionate account
of Jackson’s case. I made no charges against the men with whom I had
talked, nor, for that matter, did I even mention them. I gave the actual facts
of the case, the long years Jackson had worked in the mills, his effort to save
the machinery from damage and the consequent accident, and his own present
wretched and starving condition. The three local newspapers rejected my
communication, likewise did the two weeklies.

I got hold of Percy Layton. He was a graduate of the university, had gone in
for journalism, and was then serving his apprenticeship as reporter on the most
influential of the three newspapers. He smiled when I asked him the reason the
newspapers suppressed all mention of Jackson or his case.

“Editorial policy,” he said. “We have nothing to do with
that. It’s up to the editors.”

“But why is it policy?” I asked.

“We’re all solid with the corporations,” he answered.
“If you paid advertising rates, you couldn’t get any such matter
into the papers. A man who tried to smuggle it in would lose his job. You
couldn’t get it in if you paid ten times the regular advertising
rates.”

“How about your own policy?” I questioned. “It would seem
your function is to twist truth at the command of your employers, who, in turn,
obey the behests of the corporations.”

“I haven’t anything to do with that.” He looked uncomfortable
for the moment, then brightened as he saw his way out. “I, myself, do not
write untruthful things. I keep square all right with my own conscience. Of
course, there’s lots that’s repugnant in the course of the
day’s work. But then, you see, that’s all part of the day’s
work,” he wound up boyishly.

“Yet you expect to sit at an editor’s desk some day and conduct a
policy.”

“I’ll be case-hardened by that time,” was his reply.

“Since you are not yet case-hardened, tell me what you think right now
about the general editorial policy.”

“I don’t think,” he answered quickly. “One can’t
kick over the ropes if he’s going to succeed in journalism. I’ve
learned that much, at any rate.”

And he nodded his young head sagely.

“But the right?” I persisted.

“You don’t understand the game. Of course it’s all right,
because it comes out all right, don’t you see?”

“Delightfully vague,” I murmured; but my heart was aching for the
youth of him, and I felt that I must either scream or burst into tears.

I was beginning to see through the appearances of the society in which I had
always lived, and to find the frightful realities that were beneath. There
seemed a tacit conspiracy against Jackson, and I was aware of a thrill of
sympathy for the whining lawyer who had ingloriously fought his case. But this
tacit conspiracy grew large. Not alone was it aimed against Jackson. It was
aimed against every workingman who was maimed in the mills. And if against
every man in the mills, why not against every man in all the other mills and
factories? In fact, was it not true of all the industries?

And if this was so, then society was a lie. I shrank back from my own
conclusions. It was too terrible and awful to be true. But there was Jackson,
and Jackson’s arm, and the blood that stained my gown and dripped from my
own roof-beams. And there were many Jacksons—hundreds of them in the
mills alone, as Jackson himself had said. Jackson I could not escape.

I saw Mr. Wickson and Mr. Pertonwaithe, the two men who held most of the stock
in the Sierra Mills. But I could not shake them as I had shaken the mechanics
in their employ. I discovered that they had an ethic superior to that of the
rest of society. It was what I may call the aristocratic ethic or the master
ethic.[1] They talked in large ways of policy, and they identified policy and
right. And to me they talked in fatherly ways, patronizing my youth and
inexperience. They were the most hopeless of all I had encountered in my quest.
They believed absolutely that their conduct was right. There was no question
about it, no discussion. They were convinced that they were the saviours of
society, and that it was they who made happiness for the many. And they drew
pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of the working class were it
not for the employment that they, and they alone, by their wisdom, provided for
it.

[1]
Before Avis Everhard was born, John Stuart Mill, in his essay, On
Liberty, wrote: “Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large
portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its class
feelings of superiority.”

Fresh from these two masters, I met Ernest and related my experience. He looked
at me with a pleased expression, and said:

“Really, this is fine. You are beginning to dig truth for yourself. It is
your own empirical generalization, and it is correct. No man in the industrial
machine is a free-will agent, except the large capitalist, and he isn’t,
if you’ll pardon the Irishism.[2] You see, the masters are quite sure that
they are right in what they are doing. That is the crowning absurdity of the
whole situation. They are so tied by their human nature that they can’t
do a thing unless they think it is right. They must have a sanction for their
acts.

[2]
Verbal contradictions, called bulls, were long an amiable weakness of
the ancient Irish.

“When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must wait till
there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or ethical, or scientific,
or philosophic, concept that the thing is right. And then they go ahead and do
it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses of the human mind is that the wish is
parent to the thought. No matter what they want to do, the sanction always
comes. They are superficial casuists. They are Jesuitical. They even see their
way to doing wrong that right may come of it. One of the pleasant and axiomatic
fictions they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in
wisdom and efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and
butter of the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the theory of the
divine right of kings—commercial kings in their case.[3]

[3]
The newspapers, in 1902 of that era, credited the president of the Anthracite
Coal Trust, George F. Baer, with the enunciation of the following principle:
“The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected by the
Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the property
interests of the country.”

“The weakness in their position lies in that they are merely business
men. They are not philosophers. They are not biologists nor sociologists. If
they were, of course all would be well. A business man who was also a biologist
and a sociologist would know, approximately, the right thing to do for
humanity. But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know
only business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set
themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other
millions thrown in. History, some day, will have an excruciating laugh at their
expense.”

I was not surprised when I had my talk out with Mrs. Wickson and Mrs.
Pertonwaithe. They were society women.[4] Their homes were palaces. They had many
homes scattered over the country, in the mountains, on lakes, and by the sea.
They were tended by armies of servants, and their social activities were
bewildering. They patronized the university and the churches, and the pastors
especially bowed at their knees in meek subservience.[5] They were powers, these
two women, what of the money that was theirs. The power of subsidization of
thought was theirs to a remarkable degree, as I was soon to learn under
Ernest’s tuition.

[4]
Society is here used in a restricted sense, a common usage of the times
to denote the gilded drones that did no labor, but only glutted themselves at
the honey-vats of the workers. Neither the business men nor the laborers had
time or opportunity for society. Society was the creation of the
idle rich who toiled not and who in this way played.

[5]
“Bring on your tainted money,” was the expressed sentiment of
the Church during this period.

They aped their husbands, and talked in the same large ways about policy, and
the duties and responsibilities of the rich. They were swayed by the same ethic
that dominated their husbands—the ethic of their class; and they uttered
glib phrases that their own ears did not understand.

Also, they grew irritated when I told them of the deplorable condition of
Jackson’s family, and when I wondered that they had made no voluntary
provision for the man. I was told that they thanked no one for instructing them
in their social duties. When I asked them flatly to assist Jackson, they as
flatly refused. The astounding thing about it was that they refused in almost
identically the same language, and this in face of the fact that I interviewed
them separately and that one did not know that I had seen or was going to see
the other. Their common reply was that they were glad of the opportunity to
make it perfectly plain that no premium would ever be put on carelessness by
them; nor would they, by paying for accident, tempt the poor to hurt themselves
in the machinery.[6]

[6]
In the files of the Outlook, a critical weekly of the period, in the
number dated August 18, 1906, is related the circumstance of a workingman
losing his arm, the details of which are quite similar to those of
Jackson’s case as related by Avis Everhard.

And they were sincere, these two women. They were drunk with conviction of the
superiority of their class and of themselves. They had a sanction, in their own
class-ethic, for every act they performed. As I drove away from Mrs.
Pertonwaithe’s great house, I looked back at it, and I remembered
Ernest’s expression that they were bound to the machine, but that they
were so bound that they sat on top of it.

CHAPTER V.
THE PHILOMATHS

Ernest was often at the house. Nor was it my father, merely, nor the
controversial dinners, that drew him there. Even at that time I flattered
myself that I played some part in causing his visits, and it was not long
before I learned the correctness of my surmise. For never was there such a
lover as Ernest Everhard. His gaze and his hand-clasp grew firmer and steadier,
if that were possible; and the question that had grown from the first in his
eyes, grew only the more imperative.

My impression of him, the first time I saw him, had been unfavorable. Then I
had found myself attracted toward him. Next came my repulsion, when he so
savagely attacked my class and me. After that, as I saw that he had not
maligned my class, and that the harsh and bitter things he said about it were
justified, I had drawn closer to him again. He became my oracle. For me he tore
the sham from the face of society and gave me glimpses of reality that were as
unpleasant as they were undeniably true.

As I have said, there was never such a lover as he. No girl could live in a
university town till she was twenty-four and not have love experiences. I had
been made love to by beardless sophomores and gray professors, and by the
athletes and the football giants. But not one of them made love to me as Ernest
did. His arms were around me before I knew. His lips were on mine before I
could protest or resist. Before his earnestness conventional maiden dignity was
ridiculous. He swept me off my feet by the splendid invincible rush of him. He
did not propose. He put his arms around me and kissed me and took it for
granted that we should be married. There was no discussion about it. The only
discussion—and that arose afterward—was when we should be married.

It was unprecedented. It was unreal. Yet, in accordance with Ernest’s
test of truth, it worked. I trusted my life to it. And fortunate was the trust.
Yet during those first days of our love, fear of the future came often to me
when I thought of the violence and impetuosity of his love-making. Yet such
fears were groundless. No woman was ever blessed with a gentler, tenderer
husband. This gentleness and violence on his part was a curious blend similar
to the one in his carriage of awkwardness and ease. That slight awkwardness! He
never got over it, and it was delicious. His behavior in our drawing-room
reminded me of a careful bull in a china shop.[1]

[1]
In those days it was still the custom to fill the living rooms with
bric-a-brac. They had not discovered simplicity of living. Such rooms were
museums, entailing endless labor to keep clean. The dust-demon was the lord of
the household. There were a myriad devices for catching dust, and only a few
devices for getting rid of it.

It was at this time that vanished my last doubt of the completeness of my love
for him (a subconscious doubt, at most). It was at the Philomath Club—a
wonderful night of battle, wherein Ernest bearded the masters in their lair.
Now the Philomath Club was the most select on the Pacific Coast. It was the
creation of Miss Brentwood, an enormously wealthy old maid; and it was her
husband, and family, and toy. Its members were the wealthiest in the community,
and the strongest-minded of the wealthy, with, of course, a sprinkling of
scholars to give it intellectual tone.

The Philomath had no club house. It was not that kind of a club. Once a month
its members gathered at some one of their private houses to listen to a
lecture. The lecturers were usually, though not always, hired. If a chemist in
New York made a new discovery in say radium, all his expenses across the
continent were paid, and as well he received a princely fee for his time. The
same with a returning explorer from the polar regions, or the latest literary
or artistic success. No visitors were allowed, while it was the
Philomath’s policy to permit none of its discussions to get into the
papers. Thus great statesmen—and there had been such occasions—were
able fully to speak their minds.

I spread before me a wrinkled letter, written to me by Ernest twenty years ago,
and from it I copy the following:

“Your father is a member of the Philomath, so you are able to come.
Therefore come next Tuesday night. I promise you that you will have the time of
your life. In your recent encounters, you failed to shake the masters. If you
come, I’ll shake them for you. I’ll make them snarl like wolves.
You merely questioned their morality. When their morality is questioned, they
grow only the more complacent and superior. But I shall menace their
money-bags. That will shake them to the roots of their primitive natures. If
you can come, you will see the cave-man, in evening dress, snarling and
snapping over a bone. I promise you a great caterwauling and an illuminating
insight into the nature of the beast.

“They’ve invited me in order to tear me to pieces. This is the idea
of Miss Brentwood. She clumsily hinted as much when she invited me. She’s
given them that kind of fun before. They delight in getting trustful-souled
gentle reformers before them. Miss Brentwood thinks I am as mild as a kitten
and as good-natured and stolid as the family cow. I’ll not deny that I
helped to give her that impression. She was very tentative at first, until she
divined my harmlessness. I am to receive a handsome fee—two hundred and
fifty dollars—as befits the man who, though a radical, once ran for
governor. Also, I am to wear evening dress. This is compulsory. I never was so
apparelled in my life. I suppose I’ll have to hire one somewhere. But
I’d do more than that to get a chance at the Philomaths.”

Of all places, the Club gathered that night at the Pertonwaithe house. Extra
chairs had been brought into the great drawing-room, and in all there must have
been two hundred Philomaths that sat down to hear Ernest. They were truly lords
of society. I amused myself with running over in my mind the sum of the
fortunes represented, and it ran well into the hundreds of millions. And the
possessors were not of the idle rich. They were men of affairs who took most
active parts in industrial and political life.